This book introduces the Precariat - the growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, doing work without a past or future. This book considers why the Precariat is growing, what fears it faces, what political dangers it represents and what would make a politics of paradise to overcome them.

Aged 15 and living in LA, Michael Allen was arrested for a botched carjacking. We become intimate with Michael's experience, from his first steps to his first love, and with the events of his arrest, his coming of age in prison, and his attempts to make up for lost time after his release.

Our bestselling Handbook - known as the 'adviser's bible' - covers all the recent changes to welfare benefits, and those that are still in progress. It highlights tactical information on common problem areas and how to challenge decisions.

This book offers an account of how groups of economically marginal people have adapt and negotiate the offerings of a 'post industrial' labour market and a welfare system geared towards reintegrating them into formal employment. Through close ethnographic study it highlights collective strategies and responses to labour and welfare changes.

We are living in the most remarkable and dangerous times. Globally, the richest 1% have never held a greater share of world wealth, while the share of most of the other 99% has collapsed in the last five years. In this fully rewritten and updated edition of Injustice, Dorling offers hope of a more equal society.

European Welfare Futures presents a clear and up--to--date analysis of developments in social policy in the main EU member states. It provides a systematic account of welfare retrenchment and assesses the competing explanations of this process.

Teenagers are growing up in a world of widening social inequality, political apathy and economic uncertainty. They join gangs, are obese, have underage sex, watch porn, drink and are a menace to society. This book shows how it feels to be young and what it takes to survive and thrive on the journey to adulthood.

The Foundations of the Welfare State has been completely revised and updated. The author integrates new research findings and reorientates the arguments of the book to give greater emphasis to the continuing importance of voluntary action and the role of women.

In 2008 the author - report-writer, "Daily Mail" journalist - befriended a teenage gang in south London while doing research. What began as a conversation outside a chicken take-away shop became a three-year attempt to change their lives, taking her from job centres and the care system to prison and failing schools. This title tells her story.

This book shows how children's work can take on widely differing forms; and how it can both harm and benefit children. Differing in approach from most other work in the field, it endeavours to understand working children from their own perspective.

Britain's New Labour government claims to support the cause of human rights. At the same time, it claims that we can have no rights without responsibility and that dependency on the state is irresponsible. The ethics of welfare offers a critique of this paradox and discusses the ethical conundrum it implies for the future of social welfare.

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of social welfare and social policy in Britain before the modern welfare state. It examines the role played by voluntary social provision (including self-help and mutual aid), as well as the growth of state intervention, in meeting welfare needs.

Praise for the First Edition:
`A clear and concise introduction to comparative social policy. It provides students with a framework in which to analyze the British welfare regime and to compare it with those developed and developing elsewhere' - Hilary Graham, Professor of Applied Social Studies, University of Warwick
In this extensively revised Second Edition, the British case is related to the experiences of the United States of America, Sweden, Germany and Ireland, and set in the context of policy issues within the European Union. This textbook provides a critical introduction to British and comparative social policy. Drawing on the comparative analysis of welfare regimes, the book show how the welfare systems of individual countries can only be understood thorugh exploring the wider global context. The chapters highlight the richness, complexity and dynamics of welfare regimes in different countries, while ar the same time considering shared features and trends.
This text is a course book for The Open University course, Family Life and Social Policy (D311).

Offers an overview of issues concerning European welfare states. This illustrated book brings together a discussion of the theories and techniques of comparative policy analysis, and a description of developments in selected welfare state regimes. It also features case-studies, chapter summaries, questions, and guides for further reading.

Beginning in the late 19th century, competing ideas about motherhood had a profound impact on the development and implementation of social welfare policies. Calls for programmes aimed at assisting and directing mothers emanated from all quarters of the globe, advanced by states and voluntary organizations, liberals and conservatives...

Drawing on social policy developments and case examples from health, the personal social services and mental health, this book examines how risk is replacing need as the key principle of welfare organization and state provision of services. It explores the role of risk-based allocation and rationing systems in a climate of welfare retrenchment.

Young people in Eastern Europe are more advanced in some global trends than in the west. This original approach to youth studies explores life transitions, covering all aspects of young people's lives from education and work to family and leisure. Written by a popular author, this engaging book is key reading for all students of youth studies.